Winter Storm Was Rain

If you would have seen the local tv weather forecast last night with a tone of fear about the upcoming "winter weather" advisory, you would have expected the hounds and I would be buried under our biggest snow fall of the year. I hate "weather drama" from local tv channels to national weather experts and always take them with a grain of salt. Others go out and clear the grocery store shelves of bread, milk, and all the other packaged foods when these kind of threats occur.

Stella and I could tell it was going to be a very wet walk this morning. Where Sadie would have been sitting in the computer room entry giving me the stare down, forcing me to walk no later than 8am ... Stella was in a deep sleep, snoring, with legs and ears hanging over the foot of "my" bed a little past 9am.

She must have known the leafy path was too wet for her liking and her first step into the field was just off to the side of the path where it wasn't so wet, muddy and slippery.

This will give you some idea what the path looked like after a night of rain, instead of all that snow we were going to get after midnight. I was expecting at least some snow ground cover when we woke up but all I saw while making coffee, the car headlight reflections on a wet highway, clear of any snow.

This is not a good sign for the afternoon walk. Rains start again at noon and are supposed to be for the rest of the afternoon. I'm glad I did not apply Scott's Winter Lawn fertilizer this year otherwise I'd be mowing the first chance the yard was dry. Ask me how I know that?  :)

With all the rain and a wet field, Stella's desire for deer scat was nil. She spent all of her time with her nose to the ground or up in the air with nostrils moving as she tried to capture all of the scents she was finding this morning. With her being so meticulous in her 'data collection' the walk was a slow process ... at times one paw at a time.

I finally took a photo that shows you just how deep that gully is behind the wooded area. The neighbors that are behind my house and behind the wooded area, sits at the very top of this photo. You can see the elevation from their yard down into the gully. Luckily over the 21 years I've lived here there have been very few times where I had to walk down into that area to go get a hound. If I remember right only Harry and Sadie checked out the very bottom of the gully.

Either Stella was confused a lot this morning or she was just following what her nose told her. This would not be the first time where she would turn in the opposite direction of the walk to check something else out. Luckily this part of the path was not under water, muddy or slippery. Just very soft, but as we get higher in our 47' of elevation at the back of the field ... the path will get wetter.

Slowly but surely we move around the first turn and the back of the field looks like it's on the other side of the planet at the rate we are walking. I begin wondering if I should have brought a backpack with a lunch inside.

No deer scat but scent strong enough that I had to go over and tug at her collar to get her to move.

If there was any snow last night it would have been to the north of us and northeast. That is one thing nice about living in 'the tropics', we are about 75 miles south of the line of normal storm activity. That ranges from snowstorms, thunderstorms and tornadoes that always seem to follow I-70 from the west into the Indianapolis area

With the majority of the walk completed, Stella was still staying just off the side of the path. She was taking no chances getting her paws wet. Heidi would be tip toeing, Sadie would have charged through puddles and mud, Winston would have strolled on the path no matter how wet ... but Stella ... always bypasses any kind of ice, water puddles or over saturated paths.

Again ... reversing her stance in the opposite direction she was walking.

Just because I took a left at the "Y" you can barely see, using the old way home doesn't mean that Stella was going to follow me. She gradually veered toward the same part of the backyard we always enter at the end of the walk, the north part of the yard.

I checked the battery icon before we left and it looked as if we had plenty of battery left for the walk. Right after I took the 2nd picture on the walk this morning, the battery icon turned red and was flashing at me. So I turned the camera off and on between pictures during the walk and made it all the way to here. Right after I snapped this picture, the camera went dead and the lens retracted automatically. Perfect timing.

With rain predicted it will be another day inside. I am back to reading the huge book about Steve Jobs. Over the years I have tried multiple times of reading that book but have never completed it. I might find something else on my shelves that interests me. I do know one thing for sure ... I will NOT be reading the book by Andrew McCabe.

In my opinion he and others should be in jail not doing book tours. James Comey included.

This afternoon might be time to finally post my review on the Apple Watch Series 4 I bought January 4th. It does so much that I had to turn off some notifications and over the 6 weeks that I have used it I have fine tuned the information it provides into only what I want to see.

I still claim it's the best electronic device I have bought since my first desktop computer in 1995. I saw the other day that 1 in 4 adults now wear a smart watch of some kind.

Partly because I was sick yesterday and partly because I tried ... I kept away from tv news yesterday and last night. It was hard not to tune in to see what was going on, even when I knew what was going one. It's sad to think we have to listen to the same bullshit for the next two years and possibly longer, depending on who wins the election.

Vegas gives Trump 3-2 odds of winning. Harris is second at 8-1 and I think it was Bernie in third place at 10-1 odds. You may not remember or know, but up to the final day of the 2016 election Vegas oddmakers had Trump winning the 2016 election from day one, no matter what the tv political polls said.

Heidi has just woken up at 10:41am and strolled into the computer room where the water dish is located for her and Stella. She likes to hydrate herself right after her morning nap. When she is finished with 'inhaling' water, she will then move to her position on the couch for more sleep until lunch is served.  LOL Yes, I'm serious ... that is her daily routine. Plus she never stops for air while drinking water ... it's nonstop.

I feel much better than I did this time yesterday. Maybe I have flushed out that illness with all the water I have been drinking the past few days.

It's warm and wet here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana this morning.

Stella & I Slosh Through The Field

Stella didn't like this morning's walk any more than I did. It was just to wet after a night of rain added on to the Monday rain. I knew we were in trouble as I stepped off "Winston's Patio" into the back yard as water rose over the side of my boots. One step on the path in the field and it was all mud. My boots were only protected by the cover of wet leaves. We decided to go anyway. You can see after one photo that Stella isn't really enthused about taking the walk.

The water kept rising over the sides of Stella's paws and she hates that. She was looking for an alternative route as was I but even in the thick grass, water was above the ground with each step I took. After all, this morning once she saw standing water on the carport floor she made an immediate left and walked around the Mini Cooper to go out into the yard.

Turning on the Canon G9 X this morning as we headed out, the battery light was flashing. I didn't try to nurse the camera's battery on this walk. I put the battery on the charger and took the Nikon D3200 this morning.

About the time we made it to the first turn I seriously thought about walking over to the return path and head home, calling the walk off. Stella was cruising along the edge of the field and brush so I took a photo of my boot and kept on going.

This was taken after the water was going back into the ground. You can see just how much water was coming over the top of my boot sometimes. I moved over into the high grass to see if that would help. It was wet and muddy everywhere.

It was extremely warm this morning. Gloves were not needed nor was my Carhartt sock hat. I knew the only way we would take a second walk today was if that afternoon freeze would harden the ground fast enough to take that wake. I thought the chances were pretty slim for that to happen.

Just because her paws were wet did not mean she would increase her pace to get home. Same slow pace, one paw at a time and not a care in the world. She knew what her plan was for the day and there was no need to hurry up. The world clocks will adjust to her clock, not the other way around.

I had not made it to the yard when I glanced at my lens and saw that somehow drops of rain were on the lens. It wasn't raining, so it possibly came from the tall grass brushing against the lens. That was hard to understand since I made an effort to always hold the camera high as we walked through the tall grass.

I remembered how much it rained last Spring, way above our normal levels. I wondered if we are headed for another wet Spring and Summer? What do you use to see what your weather will be in the coming months?

By the time we had returned from the morning walk, Heidi was just curious enough about the noise Stella and I were making that she raised her head from the dog bed in the corner of the bedroom floor. I don't think she was happy having her morning nap cut short.

It was only a few hours later that I could feel the forecast was right. It was becoming colder and would probably get below 32° by this afternoon. Stella could either feel rain, hear rain or smell rain and she wasn't going any further than the edge of the carport right after lunch.

Heidi didn't have any different thoughts than Stella either. She went to the edge of the yard and mulch to relieve herself and then sprinted back to the door.

As the afternoon passed, the weather answered the question about the second walk of the day. One time I would glance outside it would be raining. Another time I'd glance up from reading my book in the living room, I was seeing snow flurries outside. We were back to temperatures a little below the normal average temperatures for February so the next few weeks of the month are set.

When I did my taxes in January it did not take me long to understand why my tax refund would be less than last year. Evidently people across America forgot their tax cut starting in February of last year, where they had less money withdrawn from their paychecks. That has two results. For those that get refunds, would get smaller refunds this year. For those that always pay taxes, like I use to when I worked, they might have a higher amount to pay in taxes. A third result would depend on what income bracket you are in, with the new tax laws in affect.

What is so hard to understand about that?

I planned to repeat on Tuesday what I did on Monday. NO TV news and NO online news headlines. NO reading of political blogs or tweets. If I can do that 10 straight days I will be well on my way of being "newsless" again like I was last fall. I think that's a good goal.

After 50 some pages of reading, I had a small snack and continued my new routine of an afternoon siesta for a couple of hours. I have gradually moved back to my regular schedule of staying up late, sleeping past 7am, with a late afternoon siesta. Long gone are those days of getting up at 5am just a few weeks ago.

It looks like a night of college basketball on tv tonight. Besides that, it was another successful day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.